Unconverted converts, unlike converted converts who are known as ‘Orthodox Christians’, imitate only the outward signs of the Orthodox Church and Faith. This is because the unconverted are only ‘Orthodox’, but not Christian. In other words, their hearts have not been changed by Faith and they remain unconverted because they live in their heads. This is because they do not confess Faith, but a pathological ideology. They suffer from ‘convertitis’, a word which I first came across over fifty years ago – there is indeed nothing new under the sun.

Unconverted converts are centred mainly in the USA, especially in Protestant-populated Old Calendarist sects, in ROCOR and in Antioch, though also there are a few of them under the Greeks and even under Moscow. California produces an inordinate proportion of them – as East Coast Americans say: ’When God made America, he tilted it to the west, so that all the oddballs would run down to California’. However, thanks to the worldwide web, their influence is spreading and they can be found in every country.

They can be recognised by eighteen practices, which reject and despise the way of life of 99.99% (199,980,000) of the world’s 200 million Orthodox Christians. These ‘anti-commandments’ against Love are given below:

Pride

1. The unconverted consider that they are better than real Orthodox, whom they dislike, shun, condemn, persecute and slander.

As in the public words of one convert bishop: ‘Patriarch Bartholomew is possessed by demons. I dislike Romanians and I only half-like Moldovans’. Needless to say, that convert is in communion with no-one, like an old calendarist. This shows the essential sin of pride, which also causes their jealousy and their love for condemning others against the commandment of Love.

2. The unconverted refuse any ‘foreign’ language.

This is all part of their rejection of real Orthodox. Just a note: English is a foreign language to any non-native English speaker. One American convert cleric we know even tried to impose his American on English people in England, as he obviously considered that we too spoke a ‘foreign’ language, though he did affect a pseudo-English accent, which marked him out as a pathological case (‘weirdo’) among English people. He insisted that his own ‘idiom’ was the only canonical one. I did point out to him that the Greek word ‘idiom’ is related to the Greek word ‘idiot’. Obviously, he did not last long here and Russians treat him as a psychiatric case.

3. They refuse to kneel on Sundays, even when the Feast of the Exaltation falls on a Sunday, let alone on the Sunday of the Cross, unlike virtually all Orthodox.

They call those who do kneel on Sundays ‘heretics’ – one of their favourite words for Orthodox. Such is their lack of humility.

Old Testament Protestantism

4. They study and practise ritualism intensely.

They are pathologically attached to ritual details, like the pharisees, and love debating the Typikon, ‘the most important book’, as someone from Jordanville actually told me and which another convert bishop called ‘his Bible’, together with the Book of Canons, ‘The Rudder’. This shows their essential Talmudic Judaism. They look for reasons to condemn others, to find fault, to nit-pick. They are ‘Orthodox’ Jews, but not Orthodox Christians. As Protestant fundamentalists and literalists, they follow the word, not the spirit, and selectively quote the canons (which they do not understand), just as real Protestants selectively quote chapter and verse of the Scriptures. Their Judaism show that they are closer to ‘Orthodox’ Judaism than to Orthodox Christianity.

5. They are obsessed with the Old Testament against the New Testament.

This comes from the Calvinism or Lutheranism in their backgrounds. Let us not forget that the Protestant Reformation was financed by Jews, as later in the case of Cromwell, and that explains their obsession with money. This Old Testament obsession with money can be seen in their scandalous attempts to tithe the faithful. One convert bishop we experienced treats the Church as a franchise operation which must bring him profit, as he considers that he is the owner of the franchise, that is, of every parish. His corporate mentality has caused and causes scandalised Orthodox to desert him in ever greater numbers.

6. Their Old Testament mentality brings them to be obsessed with fasting.

The new Pharisees fail to understand that fasting is a purely personal matter, dependent on family circumstances, health, age, guests etc. I remember one case in California in 1993, where a woman contacted me to tell me that she could not afford to fast, as it meant going a long way to a special shop and seafood was too expensive for her. She regretted joining the Russian Church. She had totally missed the point. A few days in a monastery in Eastern Europe on very tasty cabbage and potatoes would have sorted her out.

7. They are morally very strict and puritanical. All is sin.

For example, we had a young man from Eastern Europe who visited a little ghetto-church for converts. This was run by one of these ex-Protestant clergymen under Constantinople, who likes parading around his town in flowing black robes and a chimney-pot hat. The young man was ordered to leave the church at once, taking care not to touch anything, as he would ‘make it impure’. Why? Because he was already living with his future bride before he got married in his native country the following summer. This censorious moralising, puritanism and harshness come from the Calvinism or Lutheranism in their backgrounds.

8. They are extremely intolerant.

They are not only intolerant of Non-Orthodox, but also of Orthodox. This witch-hunting mentality is a pathological, not a theological, problem. I observed a typical example 20 years ago. We had a crazy convert visit us who as a Protestant fundamentalist condemned Harry Potter as satanic, whereas an old Russian grandmother loved the books, as for her they were like fairy-tales, with their magic, giants, fairies and demons. Eventually the convert left us, much to our relief.

9. They are obsessed with ‘spiritual fathers’.

They like to give themselves pretentious authority over others by boasting that they have a ‘spiritual father’, ‘starets’ or ‘geronda’. (A foreign word gives them am imagined exotic interest and authority). By this they mean that they go to confession (often over the phone!) from time to time. They confuse spiritual fathers with clairvoyant elders. The two things are quite different. All Orthodox go to confession regularly or from time to time. In this way the unconverted encourage ‘guruism’, that is, charlatans and frauds, who have never studied in an Orthodox seminary or been a novice in an Orthodox monastery for several years, or been a second priest in a normal Orthodox parish (of at least 100 parishioners) under a first priest who has decades of experience. We can see this in so many podcasts, where some self-appointed ‘spiritual father’ of Protestant origin mixes ‘mystical’ sentimentality and exotica with Orthodox Christianity – loving your neighbour.

10. As authoritarians they want to impose their own Protestant past on real Orthodox dictatorially.

Their Salem-type autocracy comes from their intolerance, like those who went witch-hunting, both literally and metaphorically.

11. They want to convert all others to their delusions.

I was told how three converts from Platina went to London in the 1970s, in order to ‘convert England’. Although they were not monks, the three bearded Americans, dressed up in flowing black robes without any blessing went to Oxford Street, London, and pestered shoppers about ‘converting to the True Faith’. The vast majority of the shoppers ignored them, but some who were annoyed told them ‘where to go’. The three converts decided that Antichrist had been born in England and there was no hope.

Pseudo-Russianism

12. Male unconverted converts have long hair and beards. Female unconverted like to dress in frumpy long dresses and skirts down to the ground and even put what seem to be tablecloths on their head, somewhat like pre-Revolutionary Russian peasants. Some even wear Russian peasant dress – to the astonishment of real Russian men, who are not bearded, and of real Russian women, who dress like any contemporary women.

The unconverted like to dress as monks or nuns, usually in black, specifically like nineteenth-century Russian monks and nuns, with whom they are obsessed. This delusion goes back to ROCOR Platina in the 1970s. A visit to ordinary, baptised but not practising, Russians in Russia would soon disabuse them of this delusion. But they do not speak Russian and do not know Russian literature, which describes reality. But they do not want reality, they only want delusion.

13. They love to cover the walls of their homes with icons and themselves with a cross.

Orthodox usually have two or three icons in their homes. A few have more. But no normal Orthodox cover their walls with them. As regards our small neck cross, we wear it inside our clothing, next to our hearts. We do not put it on outward display and it is not big.

14. Only the three-bar cross is acceptable to them.

The rejection of the simple cross, ‘stavroclasm’, is a delusion that also goes back to ROCOR Platina in the 1970s.

15. They like to litter their speech with and lecture others on a few Russian words that they have picked up, like ‘Vladyka’, ‘starets’, ‘omofor’, ‘podvig’, ‘pustynja’ or ‘prelest’. They mispronounce these, mistranslate them, and do not know the Greek or Latin originals (the Russian words are only translations from the Greek and have no mystical or sacral significance), or what they really mean.

Pathology

16. The unconverted reject their own past, for example, insisting on rebaptism and changing their names to some exotic name, for example, changing from Antony to Vladimir, Emmanuel to Avksenty (real examples).

I once met one refused to attend his father’s funeral. After all, his father was a ‘heretic’…

17. The unconverted are depressive, they have no joy.

Since the unconverted lie to themselves about reality, they are isolated and depressed. This is evidence of their psychosis.

18. They dislike family life and children.

Their rejection of the Incarnation comes from the fact that many of them are repressed homosexuals. They should read the canons of the Council of Gangra (340).